He says that the Maldive Islands were known to the Arabs as Diba. Even if that is true, and I have not been able to verify it from Arab sources, why should it not be the original Diba, the Diba that is in Arabia, shared by Oman and Sharjah of UAE. That is the Diba which has been known from ancient times until today. Even if the Maldives were known as Diba by the Arabs, it would only be by borrowing, such as the "Shiraz" which is in Kenya, the "T'aif" which is in Pemba, or the "Marseilles" which is in Unguja at Kwambani. The people of Pemba, like those of Unguja and Tumbatu, are mixtures of mixtures, from the various ethnic groups that came, settled, married and produced the people who now make the Zanzibaris.

The Sumerians and the Assyrians from Iraq, the Pharonic Egyptians, the Phoenicians, the Arabs, the Shirazis, the Bantus, the Abyssinians, the Somalis, the Comorians, the Indians, the Wadiba, the Wadebule, the Portuguese, the Baluchis, the Kurdis, the Georgians, the Circassians, the Chinese, the Sri Lankans and all the conglomeration of ethnicities that found their way across the Ocean from near and far combined to make the Zanzibaris as they are today. Two generations on the islands are enough to make one so thoroughly mixed that one's race would defy definition. Ethnic classification thereafter would be completely arbitrary, and may be resorted to only by bigoted fascists who, like weak vines, have nothing to cling on for support but on the fiction of race.